A Minor Miracle

       Two and a half weeks ago I experienced a minor miracle and I can’t stop thinking about it.  Perhaps ‘miracle’ is too strong, but at least a blessing.

      I’m staying alone in a house in Ormond Beach, Florida.  I’d flown into Daytona Beach Airport after a brief trip to D.C., I’d planned the trip to reach the airport at mid-day and take the bus which services the airport hourly.  The day was unseasonably cold and windy.  After waiting an hour and a half with no sign of a bus, I called the number on the bus schedule I carried, the response was, “Oh, we have no service to the airport today, the Bike Week traffic is too heavy to allow for that”.  Almost speechless, I finally said, “I have no car, what can I do?”  “Walk out to International Speedway Boulevard, I think you are near there, look for a bus stop, take any bus, it will go to the Transfer Plaza where you can then take the correct bus to your destination” was the response.

      A bit dazed, carrying a suitcase (without wheels) and fighting whatever illness had begun the night before, I headed down the winding airport roads, somewhat disoriented I asked the parking lot attendant for directions.  I estimate my walk to have been about a mile.  As I neared the Boulevard I saw to the left a large Harley-Davidson tent with dozens of bikes and bikers, as I got to a branching road that turned off to the right a mass of bikes, I estimate 25-30, passed in front of me as I waited; when it cleared I crossed.  As I stepped onto the sidewalk, a woman (accompanied by a man) asked, “Do you have a problem?  I can see you aren’t a biker chick”.  I briefly explained the bus problem and she said, “Where do you live?”  “About 20 miles North, off of A1A” I replied.  She said, “I have a car, I can drive you.”  First I said thank you but I’m almost to the Boulevard and should be able to get a bus.  She responded, “In this crazy traffic?  It will take till dark for you to make it back home, come on, I’ll drop my husband off at the place we’re staying and take you.  We’re here for the bike races, we come every year so I know the area.”  At that point I was beginning to feel light-headed and a bit feverish. 

      For the briefest few seconds I thought of all the warnings about ‘strangers’, but as she took my arm and led me to her car I felt no fear, only gratitude.  She did indeed drop off her husband, bring me a bottle of cold water and we headed out into the snarled traffic.  It took about an hour to reach my house, as I reached for my purse to offer her some gas money she said, “Don’t even think of it, you do something nice for someone else some day.”  In my muddled state of mind I didn’t even get her name or address.  She waited as I fumbled with keys, then, when I opened the door, drove off with a smile and wave.

      I pretty much collapsed in bed, had a raging fever through the night, got up only to change the wet bedclothes and sheets and did not get out of bed the following day.  When my daughter arrived the next morning she immediately took me to a walk-in clinic where I was diagnosed with pneumonia and extreme dehydration and sent to a hospital for the next four days.

      Why do I call that a miracle you may ask?  . . . How often do strangers pay any attention to those who pass by?  How did this kind-hearted person happen to be on that corner at that time?   And with her car just a few steps away? 

      An angel?  God or the Universe sending aid?  The Holy Spirit responding to a prayer?  Synchronicity?  

      Something bridged the gap between my need and the circumstances in which I found myself by motivating a stranger to offer an unusual kindness.  I choose to call it a miracle or a blessing and give thanks.  There are unseen dimensions to life beyond our understanding.

A God Image

        How to envision God? . . . Of course we cannot, but at times an image can help expand our understanding.   We participate in life, it is not of our making, it is given us . . . and here is this world and the vast universe; we know of it yet we can’t understand it . . . our souls whisper to us of God.

       In attempting to grasp for the unreachable, I suggest we imagine the Times’ Square New Years’ Eve ball:  a giant glittering multi-colored ball made up of thousands of small triangles of Waterford crystal glass.  A ball twelve feet in diameter, the entire thing, all surfaces, cannot be seen at one time.  As it turns light bounces off each surface, glittering like a giant jewel flashing multi-colored rays.  Each triangle is at a slightly different angle so either from the inside or from the outside, no single unit reflects exactly the same thing.  Even the glitter and flashes would be different depending upon the light and angle.

       The New Years’ ball with its 2,688-crystal triangles flash with 32,265 LED lights capable of producing a pallet of more than 16 million colors.  Sixteen Million colors?!  I can read the statistics but cannot make meaning of the numbers; I can only be awed by its magnificence.  Most of us cannot actually comprehend it for the complexity is beyond the average person’s ability to grasp, and this is a man-made object. 

       The complexity of God far exceeds that.  But consider it, for a moment, as an image of God. From the outside (our place in the world) we are awed by the magnificence of life’s wonder and being. With our limited perspective we peek out through one of those tiny windows (our religion) at the wonder as we pray and listen to explanations.  We imagine we ‘Understand God’ . . . yet that which is beyond our vision so far exceeds what we do see.   Whether from the outside or inside, whatever our position; as with the sphere, the total is not capable of being seen by anyone.   If our religion is open and progressive, it seeks to explore the many reports of the visions of mystics throughout the ages, for no two individuals see exactly the same thing.

       Unfortunately it is in the nature of people to argue, thinking we ‘know’ God better than someone else.  But God is so multi-faceted no one can truly know God.  When we seek the good, we know some bit of God as we need to know God.  We each look through different lenses and see different things.  It not a question of either/or, who is right and who is wrong, not ‘this or that’, but it is AND.   Each sees similar realities, or perhaps one is on the opposite side of the big ball and sees a very different reality but the whole is beyond encompassing by anyone; only is the ALL (the seen and that which is beyond seeing) the reality.

New Understanding

I have chosen to write of serious thoughts because it is my hope that the words I write will stimulate other serious thoughts.  Our world is in crisis.  I believe it is imperative that we recognize that our planet is but one small dot in an infinite universe so boundless that our disappearance would scarcely be noticed; but to us, the sentient beings on this planet, it is of supreme importance that we don’t self-destruct.

The 20^th century ushered in wonderful/terrible new knowledge requiring a deepening of our realization of who and what we are.  In Einstein’s words, “We must learn to think in a new way”.  What is this ‘new understanding’ that is emerging?  In truth it is not new at all. It is found in the writings of Mystics and in all wisdom literature of the ages; it is something known but not realized:  all life is interconnected, so oft repeated as to become a cliché, but now that the world has become a global village, it is critical that we realize what those words mean.  To be interconnected is to be of one whole, all parts effecting and being affected by all elements that comprise the whole.

Only recently have we left the earth’s confines and traveled through space to look back and see the beautiful blue ball suspended in space . . . without fences, borders or boundaries; earth undivided . . . a complete self-sustaining entity in the vast endless universe, one single total unit with all the necessary elements to sustain life.  What a wonder that is!

Life is the process in which we find ourselves, we didn’t create it, and we can’t call it forth.  It is a ’given’ and we each participate to its enhancement or its detriment.  The more the greater good is supported the more we all benefit.  The more destruction is spread the more we are all diminished.

Life is all around us in many forms but the human alone has the capacity to reflect and to know, to look back and see ahead and make the choices that shape the course we travel.  Humans have changed the face of the earth . . . and have threatened it with annihilation.  When we fully realize it isn’t just happening, nor is God sitting on a cloud pulling strings, the course our world travels is the result of the cumulative choices mankind has made and is making.   We each are responsible for our choices and all life is interconnected; we will succeed or fail together.

My History - Phase 3

 In the last paragraph of Phase 1 I wrote: I vowed my writing would draw from the new understanding that was emerging . . . I was working on a story line for a novel when my life fell apart . . .

Since writing the first draft, it never left my thoughts.  That typed draft stayed with me through all my moves.  It lived in a file drawer in my desk wherever I went.  In that file drawer also went other folders: one to hold articles, pictures and clippings from newspapers and magazines; in another I put bits of writing—dialogues, parts of chapters, single sentences, and thoughts and ideas which might be developed—all to one day be part of the promised story.

This final phase of my life began when my last child graduated from college; I resigned from my tenured faculty position to keep the promise I’d made to my writer-self.  Everyone thought either I’d lost my mind, or I was acting like a complete fool—but were kind enough to not say so.  I had the little 3 room house of my bachelor uncle on the family farm, I live simply so my needs were few and I was alone, thus no obligations . . . and for the next year, like building a jigsaw puzzle, I worked to utilize those file-drawer pieces to create my story.

I wrote it, then for another year I sought a publisher (that was when manuscripts were still sent to publishing houses) . . . each time it was rejected.  Deeply disappointed, I needed to find something else to do.  Teaching applications also brought rejections, as it was a period of too many qualified applicants for too few openings.  I went to the west coast and lived for a few months in a borrowed RV in a park in California working as a park volunteer in exchange for RV space and lunches.  Next I signed up for a teaching mission in Haiti at the American University of the Caribbean—an emotionally painful but enlightening experience.   After two years I returned to the states, went on a Lenten-long retreat at a Benedictine Monastery in Oklahoma where I got encouragement from my spiritual director to not give up on my book.  Again I immersed myself in re-working the manuscript and sent it out; the results were the same but this time there was a little crumb of encouragement.  Twice some version of the sentence “well written but of limited popular interest” appeared in a rejection letter.

Again I needed distance from it; I enrolled in a six-week program in San Francisco and became certified to teach English in foreign countries.  I took a short three-month assignment in Kazakhstan with a group of Russian professionals who had basic English but wanted to improve conversation skills.  I had a great time with that and have always felt I gained more from that experience than they did.  I returned to again focus on sending more inquiries, now sending only synopses as publishers no longer wanted full manuscripts.  Requirements had changed but the results remained the same.

Next I spent a year in Chicago at the Institute of Spiritual Leadership (ISL), an interreligious program that trained and certified spiritual directors.  The program was valuable but I was more or less expecting to find some support for my writing there; but for that program, the writing was considered a distraction.  Upon my return to Connecticut my computer crashed, losing my only electronic copy.  After I finished ranting, raving and crying (it took a while) I settled into the onerous task of reentering the 400+ pages from hard copy to the new computer brain after which I needed a break from it.

I learned that a student exchange organization, American Field Studies (AFS) was seeking volunteer teachers to go to Thailand to teach conversational English to high school students in exchange for transportation, room and board.  I was sent to an area in Northern Thailand.  It was intimidating because there were no other Americans and I did not speak Thai, yet it turned out to be one of the highlights of my life!  As my stay was coming to an end the school offered me a contract, which I was considering but before I came to a decision, emergency surgery and a cancer diagnosis brought me back to the states for chemotherapy.  It seemed fortuitous that I was to return to my book—I didn’t want to die with it unfinished. 

Once back on my feet I applied myself to an extensive over-haul of the manuscript; parts were reworked, things taken out, chapters combined or divided, etc.  Again I looked to publishers but now, in the second decade of the 21^st Century, publishing houses want only agent-submitted work; so my next challenge was to search for a literary agent.  Months of effort went into composing query-letters, cover letters, synopses, proposals and email queries for agents, each seemed to have different requirements.  The outcome?  I was told (by those who responded at all) that my story: -did not fit any genre; -good writing but the story did not have broad public appeal; -it was not within the expected form for a novel; -it would not draw enough readership to justify publication . . . 

I can’t begin to tell of what I felt . . . devastation . . . not a sudden and unexpected tsunami; rather, a slow deepening sense of utter futility and crushing depression—a lifetime investment had come to a dead end . . . FAILURE!

However painful the experience you think you can’t live through, you find you can.  Electronic publishing was still in its infancy when I learned of it; I eventually found my way to Amazon’s Createspace, a print-on-demand/electronic print service and The Stations became a real book, ‘out there in the world’.  I’m backed by no establishment, have no wide-reaching network, I know nothing of marketing and have no desire to learn, so it will never attract an audience beyond those I know personally . . . but I kept the promise of a story full of ‘serious thoughts’, and I haven’t stopped believing in it.  Do I have other books in me?  Ideas, even bits and pieces in a file drawer, but the disappointment still weighs heavily so I’ll satisfy the writer in me with a blog ‘ofseriousthoughts’.

My History - Phase 2

Those words, ‘my husband left the family’ sound so straight forward and simple, they fail to convey their actual tsunami effect . . . tsunami? . . . umm:  calamity . . . sudden and without warning . . . devastation . . . yes, tsunami!     . . . but after, the sun comes out!

I’d gone back to work part-time 5 or 6 months before that sentence became part of my history.  I had never questioned the Catholic mandate that marriage was permanent, no one in my family had ever divorced.  Were there indications of problems?  Yes, countless ones, and low-level tension, but his absolute refusal to consider counseling or even discuss the issues with me made me think, “O.K. I’m stuck with this” but divorce?  Never.  Neighbors were going through a divorce and my 6 year old daughter asked, “Are you and daddy going to get divorced?”  I assured her we were not because we are Catholic—within a month he walked out.  I was totally unprepared; had never handled finances, did not even know the where or if of bank accounts, was new to Georgia and all my family lived 1000 miles away in Connecticut.

I don’t know how I got through the first six months but looking back I believe it was a case of ‘not enough oil for the lamps, yet the lamps didn’t run out’!  My folks urged us (kids and me) to return to Connecticut—they could watch the kids while I got back to full-time work; when I finally realized he was not going to ‘wake up’ and return to the family, and I acknowledged I wasn’t able to survive on part-time work, I gratefully accepted their offer and we headed North.

In this new chapter the kids felt secure and happy on the farm and I could work free of worry.  I became head of the Occupational Therapy department at Hartford Hospital Psychiatric Unit.  . . . The tsunami receded.  My confidence returned, along with a burst of creativity and I began writing poetry.  The sun was peeking out and I knew I could make it.  My folks were tough, hard-working New England farmers who rose to meet, without complaint, whatever challenge presented itself.  They’d helped me for nearly a year when I needed it, now it was time to get on with my life.

This decade which had begun with feeling as if my life had ended was actually its beginning.  I’d lost myself.  The writer ‘me’ that I’d recognized at age 10 got swallowed up in the Good-Catholic-Wife-role I felt obliged to uphold.  When my husband objected to my wasting time on ‘all that unpaid writing and pointless study of useless things’ I’d moved it from the foreground to secret stolen hours to avoid his disdain.   It took some time to recognize that removing that vital part of me had led to the demise of the rest of me.  Yet to say something positive, I never doubted that to have these kids had been worth it.

The children and I returned to Georgia and while working as a waitress I fortuitously found work as director of the OT department at Georgia Mental Health Institute; in a couple of years I enrolled in the West Georgia College Psychology Masters program and following graduation became a Psychologist for the state of Georgia in a variety of positions over the next five years.  My writing during that time was composing psychological evaluations and case studies . . . and privately, journaling and poetry.

After my oldest child, Lisa graduated for high school, a new decade for us began; I landed the job I’d been wanting and seeking since receiving my MA—a teaching job at Palm Beach Junior College (re-name Community College during my tenure).  A perk with the job was free tuition for my children; Lisa chose to attend there.  My background included  degrees in Occupational Therapy, Psychology and Child Development (my first degree).  The school had an Occupational Therapy Assistant program and I taught courses in all 3 areas.  After having taught Intro to OT for several semesters I felt a good text book was needed for beginners in the field, I submitted a proposal to Mosby Publishers. It was accepted and Introduction to Occupational Therapy is now in its 4^th edition.  (other co-authors were brought in as I am no longer an active OT)  At last, the sun was fully out!  My ten years of teaching at PBJC as my children grew to adulthood were the happiest and most rewarding of my life.

                                                                                                                  (to be continued)